Part II: Hospital Stay

Part II of an ongoing series

With Ann staying the night in the hospital, I had to make some calls and send emails. First, I had to call her parents then send an email to the boss and my coworkers letting them know I would be absent at least for the day.

The latter was easy. The former, not so much.

Ann’s mom doesn’t speak to you in most cases. She questions you, and I was ready for a barrage of questions upon calling her. And that’s exactly what I got.

“Oh, so she’s staying? Well, why didn’t you take her to the ER in the first place? How long will she be there? Do they know what it is? Why do the have to keep her?”

The list can go on but I did my best to answer them all. Everything was still too fresh and I didn’t have all of the info to properly respond during my interro…conversation with her.

Ann lay in the triage waiting to be put in the queue for two different types of imaging: an ultrasound and CT scan. Apparently the ER is a rockin’ place for such things on a Thursday morning.

It would be hours before she was wheeled away for the ultrasound and I went along with her.

She was taken into a dark room and then went into the restroom where she donned her aforementioned hospital gown. The technician described what they were going to be doing and she was okay with it; nothing she hadn’t already experienced during her pregnancy.

I was watching the technician intently as she was doing the ultrasound and it looked all too familiar: zooming in on blobby imagery and taking measurements. In the case of pregnancy, that means they are measuring the size of the fetus but when you know it’s not there’s obviously some cause for concern. Right then I figured something wasn’t right.

Ann was then wheeled down another hallway into a room for her CT scan, one of many she would have over the duration of her hospital stay.

And hospitals are freaky places. Cold, freaky places that simply are not home sweet home. This was my takeaway as we followed nurse after nurse after technician down what seemed like endless hallways that all lead somewhere – really Twilight Zone-ish.

As I followed her and the technician down another hallway, we were greeted by a group of police officers who were standing at the doorway of a room. I’m not sure of the circumstances but they were all looking in the room at who I believe was a suspect of some kind. A female officer smiled and waved at Ann as we passed.

I wasn’t allowed in the room as the CT scan was performed which is understandable. I sat outside the room where my wife’s body was being bombarded with radiation, each flash of the “X-RAY IN PROGRESS” sign above the doorway letting me know when it was happening. After the scan, she was taken back to the triage where we waited for the results.

The day dragged on and Ann and I talked about what was happening. She told me she was scared and rightfully so. I held her hand and bowed my head thinking about just what in the world may have been going on. Finally, a doctor came by with some news.

“Looking at the ultrasound, there appears to be some kind of abnormality around the uterus. It’s hard to determine exactly what it might be at this stage but one possibility is an ectopic pregnancy.”

That news alone was a heart-wrenching. With an ectopic pregnancy, there’s no chance of survival for the fetus and it’s likely that the mother could suffer from internal bleeding which could kill her. It’s just a reminder of how many things can go wrong during a pregnancy, and how a pregnancy that produces a healthy baby truly is a miracle – women are indeed stronger than men.

As painful as it was to hear that news, we knew that a pregnancy was out of the question. We’re not exactly spring chickens anymore.

When the results of the CT scan came back, the abnormality shifted from the uterus to the adrenal gland and it now had a size: 5 cm. Now the course of action was to keep Ann at the hospital for blood work and a daily urine sample in order to check the hormone levels in her system. If the abnormality was on the adrenal gland, the hormone levels would be low.

I stayed with Ann as long as I could until she told me to go have dinner and get some sleep. We left Anthony at home and sent him updates as I found things out.

Her first night in the hospital was strange. The bed at home felt so empty. I felt so alone. After 25 years, this just didn’t feel right.

Her hormone levels remained acceptable her entire stay. The second day, she was visited by a urologist (Dr. P) and oncologist (Dr. F). Dr. P had a little more detail on things. I arrived in time to hear him speak.

“Looking further, it appears that the mass is on the outside of the kidney and not the adrenal gland as we had originally thought,” he said. At this point, the abnormality was just referred to as a mass but Ann was worried after a visit from Dr. F.

That’s because an oncologist studies cancer. He was called because the scan showed not only an abnormality but also what appeared to be lesions in her hip bone, so he needed to let her know there’s a possibility of something else going on inside her body.

As if, already scared, she needed something else to worry about.

“I will look at it and if it’s nothing to worry about, you won’t see me again,” Dr F. said as Ann lightly sobbed.

After Ann was released from her three-day hospital stay, we would be seeing both doctors within a week.

That nothing was something after all.